Bright Star - John Keats

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Bright Star - John Keats

• I love you all I can bring you is a swooning
  admiration of your Beauty. . . . You absorb me
• letter to Fanny Brawne May 13 1818

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Bright Star?
I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray,
pray, pray to your star like a Heathen. I have
two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your
Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I
should have possession of them both in the same
minute.
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• Context
• Keats rejected organised religion, finding it
  repressive. In this poem he takes a pantheistic
  view no particular religion of the night sky
• Typical Romantic emphasis on emotion, nature and
  sensual experience, especially the permanence of
  the natural world contrasted with the mortal
  world of love
• The natural world portrayed as sacred, therefore
  there is a sense of alienation for humanity
• Heavy emphasis on physical sexuality contrasts
  with Petrachan notion of courtly love. Keats was
  commonly criticised for this physicality
• .

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Themes

• 1 What qualities does Keats admire in the star?
  first 4 lines
• 2 Do you think Keats wants to be a star? line
  2, line 9
• 3 What aspects of humanity does he most want to
  retain? line 11, last line
• 4 What tension is created in the last lines of
  the poem? concluding couplet

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OCTET THEMES

• In the first line, the poet expresses his desire
  for an ideal--to be as steadfast as a star--an
  ideal which cannot be achieved by a human being
  in this world of change or flux, as he comes to
  realize by the end of the poem.
• In fact, he is unable to identify even briefly
  with the star immediately, in line 2, he asserts
  a negative, "not." And lines 2-8 reject qualities
  of the star's steadfastness .
• Even the religious imagery is associated with
  coldness and aloneness moreover, the star is cut
  off from the beauties of nature on earth.

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SESTET THEMES

• Once the poet eliminates the non-human qualities
  of the star, he is left with just the quality of
  steadfastness. He can now define steadfastness in
  terms of human life on earth, in the world of
  love and movement. As in so many poems, Keats is
  grappling with the paradox of the desire for
  permanence and a world of timelessness and
  eternity (the star) while living in a world of
  time and flux.
• The paradox is resolved by the end of the poem
  joy and fulfillment are to be found here, now he
  needs no more.
• There is a possible ambiguity in the last line
  is Keats saying that even if love doesn't enable
  him to live forever, he will die content in
  ecstasy and love?

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Structure

• Sonnet----but not strictly Shakespearian.
• Keats adapted the sonnet to suit his purposes
• First 8 lines, Octave, focuses on the stability
  of nature
• give quotations
• Second 6 lines, sestet, focuses on sexual love
• give quotations

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LanguageAnalyse the use of the following
techniques

• Personification?
• Apostrophe?
• Alliteration?
• Assonance?
• Strategic Repetition?
• Oxymoron?
• Allusion?

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• Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou
  art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the
  nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like
  nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving
  waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution
  round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new
  soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and
  the moors--

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• No--yet still steadfast, still
  unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's
  ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall
  and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet
  unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken
  breath,And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
  

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line 1 Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- Unchanging, constant
line 2    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night! Above, high over the earth. Keats is pointing out the star's isolation, as well as a positive quality, its splendour. Its separateness contasts with the poet's relationship with his beloved later.
line 3 And watching, with eternal lids apart, Eyelids. The star's isolation is implicit in its watching and in its not participating. It never sleeps. There is also a lack of motion in these lines.
line 4    Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, Hermit,usually with a religious connotation. Emphasizing the star's sleeplessness is part of the characterization of the star's non-humanness, which makes it an impossible goal for a human being to aspire to.
line 5 The moving waters at their priestlike task The rise and the fall of the tides twice a day are seen as a religiously performed ritual. With the poem's shift to earth, there is movement, aliveness, as well as spirituality ("priestlike").
line 6    Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, A religious cleaning ritual washing. This reference continues the religious imagery of "Eremite" and "priestlike." "Human" is what the poet is and the star is not.
line 7 Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask The "mask" is the covering of snow on the ground. This snow has pleasing connotations, being "new" and "soft." All the moon can do is "gaze."
line 8    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors- Beauty (the snow) is found in diverse places on earth. The alliteration (repetition of M sounds) stresses the connection of these words.
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line 9 No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, The poet turns again to himself "Still" has two meanings here (1) always or ever and (2) motionless.
line 10    Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, The poet now characterizes his motionlessness and his timelessness as a human being. Movement and change in human life are introduced with "ripening," a contrast to the star.
line 11 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, "Fall and swell" are also change and movement . "Soft" intensifies the sensuality introduced with "pillow'd."
line 12    Awake for ever in a sweet unrest In contrast to the eternal sleeplessness and motionlessness of the star, the poet's not sleeping is active ("awake"). Now change or flux becomes desireable, "sweet unrest," an oxymoron.
line 13 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, Repetition ("still" is used 4 times in 5 lines) emphasizes time/timelessness for human beings. "Breath" is flux, and "tender" makes it positive.
line 14 And so live ever--or else swoon to death. Three of the last four lines use "for ever" or "ever," emphasizing steadfastness in time or eternity, but it is an eternity of love, passion and sensuality. In a swift reversal, the poet accepts the possibilty of dying from pleasure. "Swoon" has sexual overtones orgasm is often compared to a dying (the French term for orgasm is le petit morte, or the small death). Because of its position as the last word in the poem and because of being an accented syllable, "death" carries a great deal of weight in the final effect and meaning of the poem.
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Scansion/Meter

• Iambic pentameter used throughout reflects the
  theme of constancy
• Caesura breaks the meter in the last two lines,
  possibly reflecting his mortality

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Tone

• 1 Find 5 examples of positive and negative lexis
  
• 2Find examples from the following semantic
  fields
• Religion, remoteness, physical sexuality
• 3 What does Keats overall attitude appear to
  be? Look for fluctuations between passion and
  ambivalence etc.